


sky blues

by kurgaya



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, First Meetings, Gen, Inspired By Sense8, Nakamaship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-19 00:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17591522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: There's a girl sitting on the top of the windmill. Luffy grins at the sight of her, amazed but pleased that someone else has managed to climb this high.“Hi!” says the girl, her eyes wide and opal-bright despite the sun. It doesn't seem to daze her as it does Luffy, the light glinting from Foosha's mellow coast and into his eyes. “Everything's so green here! Where are we?”





	sky blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [printfogey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/printfogey/gifts).



> Uh, this was written using a "forest" prompt and then basically didn't use the forest. What do.
> 
> This gets kind of sense8-y but you don't really need to know that show to understand this. This is all vague and magical so just roll with it? Hope you like it!

Luffy startles awake at the scrape of uncertain feet against the roof. His makeshift pillow - a bag of oats - rustles as he peels himself away and smacks his lips together to combat the stick of drool. His beloved straw-hat has fallen over his face and he tips it back, revealing the wood and workings of the windmill’s bin floor. Sunlight flashes in through the little window, blinking in and out as the sails sweep past. It looks to be late morning and the mice scurrying along the rafters agree with him, already busying themselves with their day. They are too light-footed to have caused the sound that woke him, though. Luffy sticks out his tongue and listens for a moment, wondering if another animal has made their perch by the windshaft. It wouldn’t be the first time a wayward seagull has been blown in-land. But then there’s a yelp and light, girlish laughter, so definitely not an animal, and dust trickles down from the floor above as though someone has sat atop the mill. Luffy wipes it from his hat and thinks, _huh_.

Nothing for it but to investigate.

He squashes wheat and barley alike as he scrambles down from the pile, each sack flagging under his weight. Around the main shaft and out of the window he leaps: there are perks of being made of rubber, and he squeezes himself out of the mill. The giant sails revolve endlessly, cutting through Foosha’s winds of never-change. When Luffy was smaller, he would cling onto the sails and see the world turn; green for the island and blue for the sky, and gold for the horizon far beyond his eye. Now, he springs up around them and onto the roof, almost slipping as his flip-flops struggle for purchase on the rounded cap.

There's a girl, perhaps his age, sitting on the top of the windmill. Her blue hair masks her almost completely against the morning; her white-cream dress could be the clouds. Luffy grins at the sight of her, amazed but pleased that someone else has managed to climb this high, especially as she's wearing strange, straw-coloured sandals and probably isn't also made of rubber.

“Hi!” says the girl, her eyes wide and opal-bright despite the sun. It doesn't seem to daze her as it does Luffy, the light glinting from Foosha's mellow coast and into his eyes. “Everything's so green here! Where are we?”

It's a strange question, but the world is filled with strange things. Luffy plonks himself down next to her, the mainsails behind him and Mt. Colubo in front. It stretches high up over the village, protecting their picturesque peace from Goa and the Grey Terminal. He's never seen this girl in Foosha before - and Luffy knows everyone in this sleepy village. Her clothes are fine enough to belong to High Town; her geographical ignorance puts her in the rich and wealthy ballpark too. Luffy doubts any of the nobles in Goa would know their way past their noses, Sabo not included.

But he can't imagine a noble willingly climbing up on top of a windmill for the view. Luffy sucks in his lips as he thinks, hoping this girl isn't someone he'll need to punch.

“This is Foosha! Don'tcha know?”

“Nope!” says the girl, repeating _Foosha_ under her breath. ”Is that in the Grand Line?”

Luffy's not great at maps, but he thinks he'd know if someone catapulted Dawn Island into the Grand Line.

He taps his chin. “Ahh, don't think so.”

“Then I've come a long way,” the girl says, sounding blissfully happy. She sticks out her hand and from it dangles a bangle of gold. “I'm Vivi.”

Luffy shakes her hand, deciding that she's probably not a noble. The gold's weird though, but Dadan has a lot of gold too and _she_ isn't a noble. Shanks isn't either, and he has lots of gold because he's a _pirate_.

“I’m Luffy! I live up on the mountain and I'm made of rubber and I'm gonna be King of the Pirates! Are you a pirate?”

“I wish! I'm from the Kingdom of Alabasta. It’s in the Grand Line. Have you heard of it?”

Luffy’s eyes widen and dazzle in the sun. “YOU'RE FROM THE _GRAND LINE_? That’s so cool! And far! Hey, isn’t that really far? How come you’re here?”

Vivi laughs. As far as Luffy’s concerned, that’s the best reaction to being lost halfway across the world. “I’m not sure! I just climbed up to the top of the bell tower and here I was!”

“Eh? What bell tower?”

“The bell tower at _home_ ,” Vivi insists, cheeks rosy and puff with pride. “Come on, come on. Give me your hand, I’ll show you.”

Luffy takes her hand. She’s smaller than he is, but not by much. Her bangle _tinks!_ against his wrist as she pulls him to his feet, and if she notices that his fingers stretch in her grasp then she is laughing too hard to say anything, her face red with glee. In one moment, Luffy’s feet are sliding down the windmill roof and in the next, he is standing atop a stone tower overlooking a vast, sun-baked city. Hundreds of buildings stretch out as far as he can see, all cobbled together like a jigsaw carved from the desert. In the distance, a blue-topped palace stands watch, its golden spires casting clockwork shadows over the city. Luffy bounds to the edge of the tower and looks down to the streets below; a multi-coloured bird startles from the lower level of the bell tower and takes flight, scaring a nearby flock into the sky. The people below bustle about with their oblivious days: traders and their carts clip-clop through narrow passages, and vendors line the streets with wares. Strange, horse-like animals trot past, each with a rider sat between its two humps. Luffy leans out for a better look and almost loses his hat to a gust of wind: he sputters sand from his mouth and Vivi laughs, crouching down beside him.

“What’re those things?” Luffy asks, pointing to the not-horses. He thinks he prefers the winds of never-change in Foosha; here they are dry and amber, like a slap in the face from the sun. The breezes over Foosha are whispers from the sea; Luffy cannot see any water here at all. “What’s that building? Where’s all your mountains? Where’re the _trees_?”

“Those are camels,” Vivi explains, and they watch as one of the camels tries to nibble on a nearby stall. It’s an ugly looking creature and Luffy says so, still clinging onto his hat just in-case the wind gets any ideas. “I think they’re sweet,” Vivi says, even as the camel makes an awful sound like Dadan groaning in her sleep. “And that’s my house! It’s big because that’s where the King lives.”

“You live with the _King_?”

“I have to: he’s my father. I’m not supposed to be up here without my guards, but it’s the best view! I think I like the view from your windmill just as much, though.”

Luffy likes the view from the windmill too, but there’s far more to see here. There must be hundreds or maybe _thousands_ of people in this city: it’s a number he can hardly comprehend. There’s a lot of people in Goa, but Luffy doesn’t like any of them. He thinks he would like the people of Alabasta, though, if they’re all as merry as Vivi.

Unless - “Does everyone here like camels?”

Vivi grins at him, backed by a cloudless, desert sky. “I think so. They’re super strong.”

“I could take one,” Luffy declares, rocking back on his heels with the indecision to jump. “I’ve fought giant tigers and crocodiles and bears, ya know.”

“ _Really_? Is that so you can be strong enough to be the King of the Pirates?”

“Yep! And because they taste good. Do camels taste good?”

“I’ve never eaten one!” Vivi replies, still looking absolutely _delighted_. “But I know a really good cook.”

“So do I,” Luffy says, and finally he turns his attention from this strange, wonderful city to Vivi, for she is equally as strange and wonderful and appeared, out of nowhere, on top of a windmill at the other end of the sea. Now Luffy is here, somewhere real or in the corner of his dreams, high above a city of stone and gold. He doesn’t think his body, although rubber it may be, can stretch the width of an ocean to catapult him here - but he doesn’t need to wonder if it can.

“You're like the others, aren’t you?” he asks, thinking of the boy in chef’s whites who wandered into Makino’s bar, the girl with hair like tangerines crying on Foosha’s coast, and the little swordsman in Dadan’s forest who walloped Luffy so hard with a stick that he’d fallen into a dojo in another corner of the world. He doesn’t think any of those children had really _been there_ ; Makino hadn’t noticed the young chef and none of the dojo students had screamed as Luffy appeared. But they _felt real_ in the same way that Alabasta’s sandy wind feels real against his skin, in the same way that Foosha’s breeze does, the same as the chef’s voice and the girl’s frightened, blubbering tears.

“I’m not really here, am I?” Luffy asks, even though the sunlight is blistering and he has to fan himself with his shirt. The heat doesn’t seem to bother Vivi, but he feels like an ice-cream on the verge of melting. The sun _feels_ real, but he wonders if anybody would react were he to jump down and punch a camel or two. Would the camel even notice, or would Luffy’s fists pass straight through?

“Well I think you’re here,” Vivi says. “Who cares what anyone else thinks? That’s what Zoro would say. Have you met him? His hair’s _green_.”

Luffy wracks his brain for the name but draws a blank, but then a memory of the forest and the dojo bursts into the forefront of his mind like a firework: the boy, the stick, and his _hair_.

“ _Eh_?” he cries, almost tipping backwards off the tower in his surprise. Vivi scrambles to catch him and then they knock their heads together, foreheads smacking in their excitement. Luffy lowers his voice, practically vibrating with his haste to share in this secret. “You’ve seen him _too_? D’you know a boy with weird eyebrows? He was a chef! There was a girl, too! Was she crying at you too?”

“Yeah!” Vivi whispers, and then, “No! I don’t know about a girl, but that was Sanji. Have you met Chopper? He’s a _reindeer_.”

They both _ooooh_.

“A reindeer? That’s so _cool_. I wanna meet him! Where are they coming from? D’you think there’ll be more?”

Vivi shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Neither!” Luffy chirps, and they both laugh. There’s a red mark on Vivi’s forehead from where they headbutted each other, but Luffy’s skin is rubber and it’s already bounced back. He really might start melting in this heat soon, but he doesn’t care. It will be worth it to meet someone new, to see this city and stand atop the bell tower as it tolls.

“What do you think it means?” Vivi asks, her voice still quiet. “That we’re meeting like this?” She tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear but it falls loose again, like raindrops down her cheek. This city probably doesn’t see much rain; it’s probably never seen green hills and open pastures at all.

There’s a lot of things that Luffy doesn’t know about the world, and every single one of those things is something he’s willing to find out. He stands up and lifts his chin high, and Vivi watches him from her crouch, her eyes like opals and wide. If she’s a Princess now, then that means she’s going to be the Queen of this place someday - which is pretty cool, Luffy thinks, but he’s still going to be the _King_.

“I guess we’re gonna have a lot of friends!” Luffy decides. He hopes to meet this _Chopper_ next, and then maybe three or four or even _five_ people more. Maybe they’ll want to sail with him; maybe they’ll conquer the sea.

“Since _we’re_ friends now, I’ll have to come visit this place for real once I’m older!” Luffy says, fist-bumping the sky. He hops up onto the edge of the bell tower, assured that he can catch himself should he fall. Vivi laughs at his antics, but she is the only one. The people of Alabasta don’t look up to see that he’s there, but one day they will, one day they’ll call him the _Pirate King_. Luffy spins on his tiptoes and Vivi is a blur of blue. “You said this is Ala-whatsit, right? How do I get to -?”

Between one turn and the next, Alabasta becomes Foosha Village again. Vivi is gone, as are the sandy buildings and the desert sun. The sails of the windmill turns endlessly, and peaceful sea salt wafts up Luffy’s nose. He slips on the domed roof and tumbles off the side. The world spins in shades of green and then smacks him with brown as he hits the ground. He rolls onto his back and lies there for a moment, stunned, and watches his hat drift down from the top of the windmill and settle by his knee.

“ _Ow_ ,” Luffy says - belatedly, experiencing no pain.

He looks up at the sleepy sky of Foosha and then sits up to dust off his hat. The world is strange, he knows, but there’s fun to be had in the weird. He plonks his hat back on and then rubs his forehead where he headbutted Vivi, and although he doesn’t notice, Foosha’s winds of never-change are still.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! All comments are appreciated, no matter how small :)


End file.
